{"id":92,"date":"2015-01-23T23:38:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T23:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=92"},"modified":"2015-01-23T23:38:36","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T23:38:36","slug":"how-kodak-went-so-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"How Kodak Went So Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

On more than one occasion I\u2019ve visited Eastman House<\/a> in Rochester NY.\u00a0 Situated in the south-east section of the city, the house which Kodak founder George Eastman built stands on a beautiful tree-lined street which is particularly delightful to visit in the fall.\u00a0 Entry to the house occurs in the side furthest from the road and the visitor finds himself passing through the International Museum of Photography and Film before coming to the house proper.<\/p>\n

Exhibits of cameras and photographs, famous and unknown, fill the halls and line the walls of the museum, emphasizing and re-emphasizing the revolution that George Eastman\u2019s innovations played in the development of the modern world.\u00a0 After all, Eastman\u2019s products shaped society and helped birth such modern day fixtures as motion pictures, photo journalism, scientific imaging and the like.\u00a0 They also netted Eastman a vast fortune.<\/p>\n

His house, which lies just beyond the museum, is a grand mansion in the true captain-of-industry style, worthy of the money he earned in his lifetime.\u00a0 Eastman was so wealthy that he was actually able to have the house enlarged by having it cut down the middle, separating the pieces by several feet and then having the gap subsequently filled in and decorated.\u00a0 The first floor of the house is preserved essentially in the style and furnishings of its owner at the time of his death.\u00a0 On the second floor, however, some of the rooms have been turned into multimedia exhibits where the visitor may learn more about the man and the vision that netted him his wealth.<\/p>\n

George Eastman<\/a>, was born in 1854 to what could be called an upper-middle class family.\u00a0 His father, George Washington Eastman, had started a business school in the early 1840s, but the family fortunes took a steep downturn shortly after George\u2019s birth when his father took ill.\u00a0 The family moved to Rochester in 1860, just two years before the father\u2019s death from a brain disorder.<\/p>\n

George eventually left his schooling behind and went to work as a bank teller to raise money to support his mother and himself.\u00a0 Extremely dissatisfied with his experiences with professional photographers of the day, Eastman spent his spare time tinkering with the chemical processes underlying the capture of a photographic still.\u00a0 From 1880 to 1884, he successfully filed for 3 patents for new ways of applying photographic emulsions and the invention of photographic film.\u00a0 Four years later, he invented the first camera designed to use the film.\u00a0 Four years after that (1892) he founded the Eastman Kodak company, which enabled him to earn vast sums of money, positively affect the lives of his employees and the people of Rochester, and to donate over 100 million dollars to various institutions of higher learning here in the United States and abroad. \u00a0His invention of film earned him the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists in 1930.\u00a0 He died of a self-inflicted wound two years later, in 1932.<\/p>\n

It is easy to look on George Eastman\u2019s life, his wealth and fame, his philanthropy and public works, and miss the one main ingredient that led to his success.\u00a0 It was the simple business idea that people would want to take photos for themselves.\u00a0 His innovations, especially the Brownie<\/a>, were means to the end of bringing photography out of the hands of the experts and putting into the hands of anybody with an enthusiasm for capturing an image, documenting a memory, or making a piece of art. That\u2019s how George succeeded. \u00a0And, unfortunately, it was the loss of that idea that led Kodak to fail.<\/p>\n

When Eastman was at the helm, Kodak reflected his innovative spirit and his desire to put people first.\u00a0 The company was unafraid to try new things, such as a 13-month accounting year or a 40 hour work week, not because they wanted to be seen innovating nor because it was shiny and new, but because they cared about people.<\/p>\n

After his death, Kodak began a strange trajectory in the business world. From the 1930s to the 1990s, Kodak ruled the landscape of film photography, with the company commanding 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales as late as 1976<\/a>.\u00a0 The constant revenue supply fueled a research development engine that generated many inventions.\u00a0 Some of the most notable are:<\/p>\n